the blueshift journal

 

 

           

            I was born in July, but never really liked the beach. Summer, now that was something I just couldn’t abide. My mother had sectoral heterochromia and was unsure of everything. My father did government work, drank craft beer. They moved to and from various Midwestern states as if unsure of which was the least boring. They hated their own parents and I was born an accident. My mother and father were married at the county registrar in the April of my birth year. She wore a white blouse; he picked her sprigs of chickweed from between the sidewalk cracks. It sounds romantic but it wasn’t.

            I had six ear infections and colic, so my parents learned early on to resent me. As a child I could never imagine any world more perfect than my own. I could never ask for more than a freshly sharpened pencil, perhaps an eraser, hot chocolate in the winter and candy cigarettes in the summer. I ran lemonade stands, braided pieces of rope to pass the time. I didn’t have to do any chores but longed to, because all of the neighbors did. I could never have been more content. What more was there to life than washing bare feet in the sink, letting dirt swirl down the drain? What more could there be than the sharp scent of fall, the dead brown leaves that were bigger than your own palm?

            We moved to Illinois. For some reason I believed that death meant spending eternity in an enormous institution somewhere in the north, perhaps Canada. It took years of movies, books, and overheard conversations to reverse this illusion. My father sometimes said things while drunk that I took to be fact. I entered middle school and started learning, more than I had ever learned before. My feet were too large, my eyes uneven, my hair greasy, I had hair everywhere in places it shouldn’t be and had to wax my eyebrows, my lip, had to shave my legs up to the thigh. I started including maybe and probably in every sentence and people started to like me more. Still, I was a loner. I wanted to be like people in books and took to lighting candles in my room at night, without telling my mother, despite the fire hazard. This was my form of rebellion. I still believed that a single cigarette had the power to kill.

            People always want you to do different things. I tried kissing boys and found I didn’t like it. I tried kissing girls and hated it as well. I worried that I was asexual and stole an orientation pamphlet from the public library. My mother found it beneath my pillow and I cried out of embarrassment. Don’t worry, she said, these things take time. I heard my parents discuss it later, a little bit drunk. The conversation alternated between concern and uncontrollable laughter. I was always tripping over my feet. I was forever apologizing. If I had died then my headstone would have simply read sorry.

            More time passed and candy cigarettes were exchanged for real ones. They did not kill me but left various scents and stains which led to a slap in the face from my father. It was only the tenth time he’d ever slapped me, usually for spilling something. My father was a good man but he simply hated spills. I stopped smoking. I graduated high school and went to college. I hated my major, but never switched it. I hated to cause a fuss. Still, college was a place half magical and half horrifying. My parents secretively tucking a box of condoms into my suitcase before I left—nothing was more horrifying than that. I nearly vomited. I lived off of peanut butter truffles and soup, spent four years wondering why I hadn’t chosen somewhere warmer. I believed that all of my feelings were experienced with a duller edge than that of a normal person’s. This notion was reinforced by my roommate, a raging cokehead with curly hair and seventeen piercings in various places. She was a super-senior from California and drank four cups of apple juice nightly to have lucid dreams. The very first day I met her, walking behind her on the stairs to our second-floor dorm, I was amazed to see that she wore her jeans low-hanging around the hips so that her thong was exposed. This was something I had read about, but never actually seen in real life. I believed that college was an unreal place where all ideas from books manifested themselves and all ideas manifested there were eventually put into books. I always fell asleep too early.

            I was called back to my hometown for the funeral of a boy I’d grown up, who had had neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis. I had hardly known him, had known he was going to die, had been told hundreds of times that he would die, but still I was unbearably affected by his death. It seemed incredible that something which had so long been part of the future had become the present and then the past. It was my first experience with death. Some of my grandparents had died but my parents, hating them, had never allowed me to meet them, and so I never felt any real loss. The death of this boy terrified me. I graduated college and was even more terrified. I was up to my ears in student debt and decided to go to Italy. Alone. My parents warned me that it was a horrible idea. My roommate (staying on for her sixth year of college) warned me that it was a horrible idea. I didn’t know anyone else, but if I did I’m sure they would have told me it was a horrible idea. I even told myself this, yet still found myself on an unnaturally cool plane full of tourists. I despised tourists although I was one. I could not sleep on the plane. My roommate overdosed in a frat house bathroom. The plane landed in Milan.

            Italy smelled like rainwater, like apricots. I couldn’t make it back for my roommate’s funeral. I gained six pounds. All of that free hotel food. I packed a suitcase full of workout clothes but never opened it. I saw the sights. In the cathedral they made me wear long pants and a plastic shawl over my bare shoulders. I had never felt underdressed before. I tried forcing myself to appreciate the old paintings but thought they could be made just the same on a computer. I was ignorant and ungrateful and wasted too much money. All I really liked was the gelato. I met Italian men and could not speak their language. They did not like tourists and neither did I. I never walked around after dark. In Venice someone had spray painted TOURISTS GO HOME on a wall. I couldn’t pluck up the courage to ride a gondola alone. There were so many pastry shops. I could never eat enough. They put my roommate’s body in a box and put the box in the ground. People threw dirt on it and then went out to eat. The food probably wasn’t as good as it was in Italy. There it was rude not to finish the entire meal. The free hotel breakfast was fancier than any meal I’d ever eaten. Steamed asparagus, apricots whole and halved. Rome was beautiful. I wrote postcards. My father started a craft beer brewery and my mother took up scrapbooking. This made me feel old. I avoided mirrors. There are so many mirrors in Europe. Floor-length ones in the elevators, in the bathrooms. As if anyone would like to watch themselves using the toilet.

            The flight home felt shorter than the one there. I was in serious debt and could not find a job. I found a boyfriend instead and slept in his basement. I no longer felt European, I felt like a loser. I took up smoking again. Everyone smokes in Europe. I forgot all the Italian I’d learned (I’d learned three words).  Eventually I found a job in a mailroom and was infinitely happy. I broke up with my boyfriend and felt free. I never paid my rent. I wore scarves from Italy. I lost six pounds. I was beautiful and shaved my legs up to the thigh. Nobody shaves in Europe. When I was a child I had six ear infections and now I can’t hear right. I braided pieces of rope to pass the time. I was waiting for something but didn’t know what. Four years passed. I was always going to visit my roommate’s mother but I never found the time. My father’s brewery went under. I got drunk and woke up pregnant. I miscarried and started going to church.

            For months I could do nothing but eat peanut butter truffles and cry. I wanted to be European but realized I never could. I left without paying my rent. I found a new job, a new boyfriend. Eventually I stopped crying. I gained ten pounds and would never lose the weight.  I dated the boyfriend for two years. I started drinking apple juice to have lucid dreams. I never spilled. I suspected that my boyfriend was gay. I asked him if he wanted to get married. At the county registrar. I would wear a white blouse, he would put chickweed in a bouquet at home. Instead we were married in a Baptist church. I only smoked in secret. I kept glass souvenirs from Italy in the bathroom and dreamed (lucidly) about apricots. Sometimes my roommate’s ghost visited me in my sleep. Whenever I thought about the boy with neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis I cried. Eventually I was pregnant. There had once been a baby inside me but it had leaked out. I was happy then and now there was a new baby inside me. If this one died I would—

            The baby did not die. He was born and we moved to Illinois. I never smoked during my pregnancy but afterwards would sometimes light up in the tub, if the steam fan was on and candles were lit. I never cried. When the boy was older I gave him a list of chores and he hated it; he never did them. I washed his feet in the sink, showed him the leaves that were bigger than his own hand. My husband was straight. I gave my son hot chocolate in the winter, fresh pencils in the fall. I only cry sometimes. My father died and did not go to Canada, instead he went in a box in the ground. My son ran so many lemonade stands. I never picked up a cigarette again.